On October 15th Adobe released there next generation suite of programs bundled as their Creative Suite. Included in this suite was Photoshop CS4, the much rumoured update to the Photoshop series.

While I’ve not yet had hands on experience with CS4 there are a few features which are could be useful for photographers. You can read about them on the Adobe Website

It’s been a very long time since my last blog and what better way to get back into it than with some news on the next version of Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 should be out in the next month or so and true to form Adobe look to be releasing a product that adds new features and improves old ones without adversely affecting anything else. There are quite a few new features which Adobe highlight in this version but the one I wanted to mention today is the improved Dodge and Burn tools.

The dodge and burn tools allow you to lighten or darken sections of your photographs which allows you to improve the overall appearance of your images. In the past these tools have worked but have sometimes produced bad results. I have often resorted to using a 50% gray layer set to Soft Light onto which I paint in low opacity white or black to get a more controllable affect.

However the tools have been tweaked and improved and now offer the option to retain tones which does seem to produce more favourable results.

Check out this video from the CS4 learning centre for more information.

I’ve not been very good at keeping things up to date on the Lightroom blogging front I’m afraid. It seems all of my free time is absorbed quickly by offloading, processing and working on the website as well as having some time out for friends as well.

I’ve been working with Lightroom for a few weeks now and I must say that I’m becoming a bit of a convert. It’s taken some time to get used to working in the software and I’m still not sure that the output images are as good as those from Capture One but I think that’s down to lack of knowledge on my part. The added features inside the Lightroom develop module are very welcome however. I like being able to do spot corrections and specific colour edits on the original files in a non-destructive manor.

I’ve completed reading the very good Adobe Photoshop Lightroom book for Digital Photographers by Martin Evening. I was impressed by the writing style and level of detail in the book and it’s gone a long way to help me develop my Lightroom skills.

I also recommend Matt Kloskowski’s Lightroom Killer Tips blog. Matt is one of the presenters from Photoshop TV and his relaxed style and intimate knowledge of the software make for easy but useful reading.

I have uploaded 1500 photographs from Biggin Hill into Lightroom and it made my work of selecting photographs to send to the organisers as part of my job of official photographer a much easier process than normal. I’ve still got a lot of work to do with keywording and editing the images for my website which I hope to make a good start on over the weekend.

With the poor weather that greeted me early yesterday morning I decided not to bother with my trip to Brands Hatch for the Historic Master’s Festival. This was a real shame as I really enjoy the event and had been looking forward to it for a good few weeks. Not wanting to totally waste the day I spent a few hours teaching myself Adobe Lightroom for the first time.

I played with the Beta version a while ago but never really got to grips with the software and I found that my Capture One RAW convertor was able to do everything I wanted with much less fuss. However I’ve finally realised that I really need to properly catalogue my photographs and tag them with keywords in order to find things more readily. This on is not a feature available in Capture One and so I felt Lightroom deserved another chance.

I’ve decided to try and keep up some regular blogs about my discoveries and learning curve with Lightroom so that perhaps my ramblings can help and inform others in a similar situation.

Software Overview

The software has been well designed and the initial interface provides a lot of detail without feeling too cluttered or daunting.

At the top you have access to the various modules that you can utilise to proof, develop and finally display or print your photographs. For my purposes the main two areas I will utilise will be the Library and the Develop modules.

To the left you have your folders, collections, keyword and meta groups. These allow you to sort the displayed images very quickly based on any number of criteria. Initially these are unpopulated but I very quickly found them useful once I’d imported a few collections of photographs and started Keywording them.

To the right of the screen you have your develop options and various settings that relate to the active image and at the bottom you have a scrollable set of thumbnails and some toolbar options.

In the centre you can display your images in a grid or work on a single image in more detail. There is the ability to compare images if you are making cuts from your initial import, so that you can decide side-by-side which images you wish to delete.

Importing Files

The first thing I needed to do was to import some images into Lightroom. My current organisational structure involves using uniquely coded folders organised by year then month on a large SATA hard disk.

I was reluctant to loose this structure which works pretty well for me currently and was pleased to find that I could import photographs into Lightroom and still leave the files in their original structure. This allows for the best of both worlds in my opinion.

I imported two batches of images to begin with which totalled around 1,000 photographs. I then began keywording them and deleting some of the bad images. It’s my goal to work on this as often as possible to begin refining my collections to prevent wasted space and to end up with a decent catalogue to improve the ease at which I can find specific photographs.

I will continue this series as I get to spend more time inside Lightroom and as I develop a workflow that suits my requirements.